Biosketch
Prof Guy Midgley
Professor Guy Midgley is an internationally acknowledged expert in the field of biodiversity and global change science. His primary research interests are plants, water and carbon relations – specifically photosynthesis and higher order responses to elevated CO2 and climate change. He co-developed and published a synthetic modelling framework and tool (BIOMOVE) in 2010 for assessing population and geographic range change, which was successfully applied in California. He has led and contributed to several policy-related government reports and collaborated internationally on global change research themes in Chile, Australia, USA, UK, Germany, France, Botswana and Namibia. In 2014, Thomson Reuters listed him as a “Highly Cited Researcher”, one of only six in South Africa. He has authored/co-authored more than 160 scientific and popular publications.
Midgley is a researcher in the field of ecology, and has done scientific and policy related work on environmental issues since the 1980s, first with SANBI (1983 to 2014) and since then as a Professor at Stellenbosch University. His main areas of work have been in plant ecophysiology, biogeography and species ranges, population demography and dispersal, and aspects of systems ecology (including disturbance) and global ecology.
He has worked directly on climate change-related issues since 1990. He has collaborated widely with scientists, research groups and NGO’s internationally on global change research, authoring more than 150 publications addressing a wide variety of ecosystems and environmental drivers. He is a globally highly cited researcher, identified as such by Thomson Reuters in 2014. Highly cited work includes that on species extinction risk under climate change, the global role of wildfire in controlling ecosystem structure, and the role of past and future CO2 levels on ecosystem structure and function.
He was a co-ordinating lead author for the IPCC 4th, 5th and now 6th assessment report, and for the Global Report of the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He chaired of South Africa’s Global Change Science Committee for more than a decade, among many senior national roles. He contributes to international policy processes under the UNFCCC and the CBD. As a research fellow of Conservation International, he co-authored their popular book “A Climate for Life” published in 2008. He currently conducts research into climate and global change impacts on ecosystems and species, working in a wide variety of southern African ecosystems. He is a recent awardee of the Royal Society Marloth Medal for contributions to science and policy, and a Humboldt Foundation Research Awardee for lifetime contributions to science.